Credit: Tero Vesalainen/Shutterstock.com

With the embrace of legal technology steadily gaining momentum in Africa, some experts predict the possibility of the region surpassing the rest of the world, like it did with the mobile phone revolution.

To the surprise of observers globally, users of mobile phones across Africa grew exponentially from 25 million in 2001 to almost 650 million in the space of 10 years — far more than what was reported in Europe or even the United States.

The revolution is also believed to have spurred the growth of Africa's mobile money market, which is currently worth two-thirds of the global market.

Many believe a big part of the reason for the leap was the fact that landline phones were not as common across Africa, allowing rapid adoption of mobile phones, which were easily affordable and came at the same time as major investment by telecoms companies.

So could a similar thing happen in the field of legal technology?

Steven De Backer, the founder of African-focused legal intelligence company, Afriwise, said the region stands a chance in succeeding in legal technology by creating solutions that promote access to law and justice, as opposed to solutions for law firms.

"Where I strongly believe that Africa will be able to leapfrog compared to the rest of the world is in terms of law tech," he said, defining law tech as solutions that solve a legal problem not addressed by the current legal market.

The former Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer lawyer explained that a farmer in a remote village in Nigeria whose rights have been violated may not be able to get legal assistance due to the huge gap in access to justice.

"You can actually give a solution to those people. They can just text a chatbot or go on online, and then ask the question, and they will get a response. "

Law firms investing in innovation

Riding on the wave of the possible legal tech revolution, African law firms are also transitioning from leveraging existing tools to serve clients to wanting to innovate and potentially develop their own tools.

Last year, the trio of Bowmans, Webber Wentzel and Cliff Dekker Hofmeyr, disclosed that integrating technology in their processes helped to save up to 50% of their lawyers' time and ultimately resulted in cost savings and increased efficiency.

Lawyers at these firms and others interviewed for this article said the technologies available to them include contract review softwares, E-discovery tools, document management systems, automation tools and more.

Meanwhile, some of the leading firms in the region are taking a significant step forward by investing in Generative AI and other related technologies to create their own products.

For instance, Johannesburg-based Webber Wentzel, a firm in an alliance with Linklaters, recently rebranded its legal technology division with a five-year plan to make substantial investments in artificial intelligence.

The division, now named Webber Wentzel Fusion, will deploy a multidisciplinary team consisting of lawyers, project managers, tech experts, analysts, and paralegals to deliver on legal projects, according to the firm

Aalia Manie, who leads the team, told Law.com International that the decision to rebrand the division is in response to the growing needs of both its lawyers and clients.

"And what we are doing here is to say; What are the problems faced by our lawyers? What pain points do our clients suffer? Which of those are the biggest and the highest priority?"

"We are looking to match our generative AI investments and experimentations and align them to those pain points," she said.

ENS, one of Africa's largest law firms with offices in seven countries, has an intelligence department dedicated to similar interests.

Ridwan Boda, a Partner at ENS and head of the firm's Technology, Media and Telecommunications team, said the intelligence unit is implementing initiatives to help the firm leverage existing AI tools like Chat GPT while also building its own legal tech offering.

"There is already a part of these initiatives that is going to take more focus in the next year or so," he said. Boda also hinted at the possibility of ENS playing in the innovation space in the near future.